And at last, a few more quotes from a superb man!
"If the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised." -- Reagan, '87, accidentally reading the notes for his stage directions aloud which told him to act surprised should the issue of arms-for-hostages come up.
"You sonofa*****, you broke my rib." - Reagan, '81 to the Secret Service agent who pushed him into his car. Reagan later realized that he was shot and that the agent had possibly saved his life.
"Hollywood has no blacklist." -- Reagan, '60. FBI records have since shown that this was a lie, and that Reagan personally informed on several actors, later shown to be innocent, destroying their careers in the process.
"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964." -- Reagan, '66, on how he would have opposed the legislation that came out of the civil rights movement.
"Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine." -- Reagan, in a speech he gave to a crowd in Atlanta, GA.
"...humiliating to the South..." -- Reagan, '80, describing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, arguably the primary legislative victory for blacks during the Civil Rights movement.
"I believe in states' rights..." --Reagan, '80, in a speech in Philadelphia, MS, a town famous for the murder of three civil rights workers in '64. "States rights" is used in the South as a code word indicating support of Jim Crow laws.
"A small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates ... brought such shame to a great university." -- Reagan, '66, complaining about student protests against Vietnam on the Berkeley campus.
"If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." -- Reagan, '69, prior to having national guard soldiers break up a peaceful protest on the UC Berkeley campus. The protesters were teargassed and fired upon with buckshot, killing one protester and wounding at least 128 others.
"... a tragic illness." -- Reagan, '67, desribing homosexuality. When two of his aides were found to be gay that year, he asked for their resignations.
"Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [because] illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." - Reagan, '89. Reagan didn't even mention AIDS until 1987, by which time it had spread into the heterosexual population and over 25,000 Americans had died.
"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice" - Reagan, '84.
"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons." -- Reagan, '71
"We're not building missiles to fight a war. We're building missiles to preserve the peace." -- Reagan, '84, justifying adding additional nuclear weapons to an arsenal already capable of destroying the world many times over.
"There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this." -- Reagan, '83
"We may be the generation that sees Armageddon." -- Reagan, '85
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and be home by Christmas" -- Reagan, '65
